Venus Retrograde 2015 (one)

Below you will find my notes (sort of turned into an article) from the July 19th workshop and birth of Silver River. If you are patient I hope to get through the entire article. If you are not you can email me: julie@juliesimmons.ca and i will send you a link to the recording on dropbox. (easy to use). Although Venus is retrograde every year and a half this is most relevant to August and September of this year as she is retrograde NOW!

And so we begin…

“There is no evidence or proof of the legitimacy of any theories or principles of astrology. There is no reason to believe that stars and planets or their movement could have any influence whatsoever on the lives of human beings or the countries of the earth. Neither is there any empirical evidence to show that true love is anything but a construct created by humans to solidify a family unit based on monogamy and a strong, diverse lineage for the species. No evidence of any true god. And yet we watch the stars, we fall in love, we pray. Therefore scholars of astrology, love, and religion have been forced to accept that something can be real, even if it is not true. Scientists, obviously, acknowledge no such paradox”.

The stories we tell ourselves about our experience, both personal and universal touch the emotional part of the brain, the heart of the mind; where we store the memory of old traumas. All healing requires us to create new stories, using fragments of the old, the way you might take a tattered garment and make it into a blanket or a pair of gloves. This transforms the emotion we feel regarding the original wound. It expands our frame of reference. Somehow the dark night of the soul can then be reclaimed as initiation, and we see and know what was obscured about ourselves and life in general. Our trauma takes on a positive new meaning. We come to think of our trial as a gift, a call to a more authentic spiritual Self.

Back in the day before humans divorced ourselves from the world around us – the world above and the one below – there were many such stories that we told ourselves. Because even back then traumatic events occurred. And the mechanism for healing is an inborn trait. (For all sorts of mammals.) Most of the best stories came from the heavens.

The art of celebrating such things has been lost to our culture for a long time. We have watered down the imagery, boxed it into religious structures and believed the ‘experts’ as to the true nature of our hearts. As if the world has become a network of corporations selling meaning. I’m sure I don’t need to belabour this point in this particular group. Given that Venus is about matter; specifically the attraction of spirit to matter. It is more important than ever to allow her expression as organically as possible. I’m sure if we inspect her under the hood we would not find specific human genitalia but even so, down through the ages Venus, at least as the evening star, has been seen as feminine. The seductress at her worst, the expression and valuing of beauty at her best. We have lost too much by removing wombs and women from the stories we tell. We don’t want to make that mistake with Venus!

Such is the story that has been told for countless ages about the movement of Venus, the Queen of Heaven into and out of visibility.

As astrologers we find the archetypal aspects of a story by looking at the planets, studying their movements and relating them back to ourselves. Different cultures may come up with different versions but this is not our issue today. Today we are going to look at the story of Venus and relate it to ourselves. Just like our ancestors did. Much has been lost and gained since this story was a meaningful part of how we lived.

I believe it is valuable for us in the ‘post enchantment universe’ to participate in this kind of thing as a collective acknowledgment of this event because it is a soft but nonetheless real way of resisting the blind ignorance of living in a world whose parts have been so painfully dissociated from each other. In this way, over time we may find meaning and ultimately wisdom about our circumstance.